Who Was Jimmy Lee Jackson...

...and Michael Jackson, Benny Tucker, Amelia Boynton, James Reed, Viola Liuzzo...

Last week, Mara Ferris – Civil Conversations Project co-founder and video documentarian - and I spent the week in Alabama interviewing and filming historical places and people. It is not the mission of CCP to re-hash history. Our public schools should be doing that. But two years ago as my buddy and I were driving back from our adventure kayaking the length of the Everglades while simultaneously swatting mosquitoes and gnats, we passed close to both Montgomery and Selma – cities with significant histories. Cities that I had heard the names of my entire life. So we stopped and spent a few days. In both cities, but Montgomery especially, you really could not walk a full block without encountering a historical marker having to do with the slave trade or the Confederacy. I write from Colorado and I took note that it is one thing to write about race when the backdrop is snow covered mountain peaks, or deep, red rock, sandstone canyons. But it was quite another to think and write about race from the exact spot that mothers had been separated from their children and sold… never to see each other again. So I’ve been back. Twice. Both times with Mara as she interviews, films, and tries to capture the poignancy of one of the places that was the start of where America’s Thing With Race began.

I miss a lot of deadlines and even important meetings. I’d love to say that today is the 60^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday - an event so cruel that it captured the attention of the entire world and changed the course of history. But it’s not. The anniversary was yesterday.

The catalyst for the march from Selma to Montgomery which became the violence at the Pettus bridge, was the police murder of a young church deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Jimmie Lee Jackson funeral

Jimmie Lee was protesting the jailing by sheriff Jim Clark of civil rights activist James Orange. Orange had been arrested by Clark for what was then the catch-all charge of, ‘Inciting a riot’ and the Black community was concerned that he Orange would be lynched. Clark a rabid segregationist was known for pinning a button to his uniform that said simply, ‘Never’.

James Fowler. Samepassage.org

When the Alabama State Police showed up, Jackson, his sister, his mother Viola Jackson, and his 82-year-old grandfather Cager Lee, ran into Mack's Café behind the Baptist church where the other marchers had fled to. Police clubbed Lee to the floor in the kitchen; when Viola attempted to pull the police off, she was also beaten. When Jackson tried to protect his mother, one trooper threw him against a cigarette machine where Trooper Fowler shot him twice in the abdomen.

Eight days later young Jimmy Lee died.

James Fowler. The Washington Post

Officer Fowler was eventually bought before a grand jury. But the racial politics of the times were certainly not going to allow a conviction. Fowler walked free.

40 years later a new, young Assistant Attorney General named Michael Jackson was charged with handling cold cases. Jackson was only two years old when Jimmy Lee was shot. He didn’t think that he could get a 40-year-old case to go anywhere, but he took it on and in 2007 he sent Officer Fowler to jail.

Michael Jackson is still practicing law. He is in private practice and is also a special prosecutor for the governor’s office. Mara and I had the privilege of sitting down with Attorney Jackson. He told us all about the case, and about the life and atmosphere in Selma decades ago. When Mara asked him what had motivated him to take on and pursue the case, he said simply, “It just didn’t seem right that Fowler should be walking around free.” Stay tuned for Mara’s film of the interview.

The next day, still in Selma, we visited Benny Tucker, known simply as Tucker, as he sat and rocked on his front porch. At 79, Tucker believes that he is the last living foot soldier for the March from Selma to Montgomery. Still a practicing ordained AME minister, Tucker was a 19 year old divinity student in 1965. He worked with Doctor King and the other organizers to coordinate the March. On the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, Tucker was assigned to watch over and protect Doctor King. As far as Tucker knew, he was walking to his death that day, as were all of the marchers. As he said, he didn’t die, but others did, both Black and White.

And just as we had when Michael Jackson inserted us directly into a history that I had only read about, both Mara and I got goose bumps as Tucker, as calm and gentle a person as I have ever met, relayed the violence of the day that changed history. Again, stay tuned for Mara’s film.

I was motivated to write about this history today not only because it’s the anniversary, but because this morning I read about how yet another institution – the University of VA - has wiped out all vestiges of their diversity, equity, and inclusion program - a program meant only to make the promise of all people being created equal a reality. It wasn’t the disappearance of another program rooted in American values. It was the words of both the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, where I read the news, as well as the words of VA governor Youngkin that motivated and disturbed me.

The WSJ reported, “Universities are no longer a safe space for violating civil-rights laws, and Friday was a banner day on that score. The University of Virginia banned DEI in colleges state-wide, and the Trump Administration pulled some $400 million in funding from Columbia University… The goal is to make sure UVA complies with the Constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Who knew that affording opportunities for people in an attempt to overcome over four centuries of barriers to opportunities was a violation of the law…a violation of the Constitution? Who knew? I’m left wondering which part of the constitution UVA and other colleges have been violating.

And who would have suspected that cancelling $400 million in funding for that institution would be a cause for glee? Who knew? Who would have suspected?

And then the Journal went on to report the words of VA governor Glenn Youngkin who called the vote “a huge step toward restoring the ideas and pillars of Thomas Jefferson and the university that he founded, that everyone is created equal, that we will not have illegal discrimination, that we will restore merit-based opportunity.”

Jefferson, along with his buddy Ben, in writing the Declaration of Independence from King George the 3^rd, did in fact address equality: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But I’ve been poking around and I’m confident that neither Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin nor any of our founding fathers addressed either discrimination or merit-based opportunity in any form.

As I was contemplating the sad and swift dismantling of DEI by a racist felonious president who refused to rent any of his 13,000 NYC apartments to any Black people and who in the wake of the deadly Charlottesville race riots, declared that White supremacy organizations had some “very fine people”, I was forwarded word of the end of diversity initiatives at Arlington National Cemetery that appeared in another Substack -kevinmlevin@substack.com

“There is no better place to learn about the rich and diverse history of the United States than Arlington National Cemetery. Stepping onto the grounds of Arlington offers a powerful reminder of the service and sacrifice of Americans from all walks of life, who answered this nation’s call and often paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Unfortunately, the US Army, which manages Arlington, has fallen victim to the wave of executive orders, signed by President Trump, directing federal agencies and departments to remove or edit web pages that supposedly violate what are at best vaguely-defined anti-DEI guidelines.

As of the publication of this post, web pages focusing on African American history, Women’s history, Reconstruction, and the Civil War have been removed from the educational page of Arlington’s website.”

U.S. Army Archives. An Arlington Brochure that is no longer available.

I expected Trump to go after equality initiatives. He said he would and I believed him. What has surprised and saddened me is the joy that so many of my fellow Americans have displayed as America is taken back to when it was “great”. My guess is the target date of how far back MAGA Americans want to take America is April 12, 1861, the day the Confederacy began their fight to ensure the permanency of White supremacy.

Anyway, back to Bloody Sunday. As you know, I’m ok with somebody writing something for me so that I don’t have to. In this case, Heather Cox Richardson.

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“Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, but the measure did not adequately address the problem of voter suppression. In Selma a judge had stopped the voter registration protests by issuing an injunction prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.

To call attention to the crisis in her city, Amelia Boynton, a member of the Dallas County Voters League acting with a group of local activists, traveled to Birmingham to invite Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to the city. King had become a household name after delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, and his presence would bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.

King and other prominent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in January to push the voter registration drive. For seven weeks, Black residents tried to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2,000 of them on a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.

Then on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting, but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Jackson died eight days later, on February 26.

The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.

On March 7, 1965, sixty years ago today, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the fray.

Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this time, King led the marchers in prayer and then took them back to Selma. That night, a white mob beat to death a Unitarian Universalist minister, James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to join the marchers.

On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

The marchers remained determined to complete their trip to Montgomery, but Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, refused to protect them. So President Johnson stepped in. When the marchers set off for a third time on March 21, 1,900 members of the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal marshals protected them. Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people.

On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag, Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”

That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recalling “the outrage of Selma,” Johnson said: "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter registration in districts where African Americans were historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”

As recently as 2006, Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act by a bipartisan vote. By 2008 there was very little difference in voter participation between white Americans and Americans of color. In that year, voters elected the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, and they reelected him in 2012. And then, in 2013, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holderdecision struck down the part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get approval from the federal government before changing their voting rules. This requirement was known as “preclearance.”

The Shelby County v. Holder decision opened the door, once again, for voter suppression. A 2024 study by the Brennan Center of nearly a billion vote records over 14 years showed that the racial voting gap is growing almost twice as fast in places that used to be covered by the preclearance requirement. Another recent study showed that in Alabama, the gap between white and Black voter turnout in the 2024 election was the highest since at least 2008. If nonwhite voters in Alabama had voted at the same rate as white voters, more than 200,000 additional ballots would have been cast.

Democrats have tried since 2021 to pass a voting rights act but have been stymied by Republicans, who oppose such protections. On March 5, 2025, Representative Terri Sewall (D-AL) reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would help restore the terms of the Voting Rights Act, and make preclearance national.

The measure is named after John Lewis, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader whose skull law enforcement officers fractured on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Lewis went on from his days in the Civil Rights Movement to serve 17 terms as a representative from Georgia. Until he died in 2020, Lewis bore the scars of March 7, 1965: Bloody Sunday.”